Altijd alles anders

Colourful, unpolished portrait of the Rotterdam theatre-maker Paul Röttger, whose work has been all about inclusivity for 30 years. The thread running through the film is rehearsals by Theater Babel Rotterdam, the theatre company of which he is director, that performs some 150 productions a year. Röttger previously headed the Rotterdams Centrum voor Theater and Theater Maatwerk (Rotterdam Centre for Theater and Custom-made Theatre). The documentary shows his ongoing search for equal artistic collaboration between people from a wide variety of genders, cultural backgrounds, physical and mental conditions, and professionalism.

Röttger is wary of ‘voyeurism’ and strives to achieve results that go beyond cultural works or ‘community art’. “First and foremost, it has to be art.” The film takes its time to get to grips with his method for inclusive collaboration. In interviews with the makers, the theatre-maker explains his working methods and motives. “I want a world in which people who are different are not hidden away, but out in the open and joining in. I make this world using theatre.”